FOR RELEASE: Feb. 7, 1997
Contact: Susan Lang
Office: (607) 255-3613
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: Larry Bernard 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- College women who were sexually abused before age 18 tend
to have less secure and trusting relationships with their partners and
lower levels of interpersonal functioning and social adjustment than
college women who were not abused, according to a new Cornell University
study.
College women who were sexually abused as children also show more signs of
post-traumatic stress disorder than other college women, particularly if
they had less secure and responsive relationships with their mothers or
primary caregivers during childhood.
"In other words, our findings suggest that how sexual abuse affects overall
mental health in later life depends on the quality of the abused girl's
childhood attachment. Girls with a secure, responsive relationship in
childhood with their mothers or other primary caregivers have some
protection against the long-term negative effects that sexual abuse has on
other college women who were abused as children," said Margaret Feerick, a
doctoral student in the department of human development and family studies,
and her adviser, Jeffrey Haugaard, associate professor. Although other
researchers have looked at the impact of sexual abuse on behavior problems
and adjustment difficulties, the Cornell researchers believe their study is
one of the first to explore the long-term effects of sexual abuse on
attachment in later life and to examine the role of childhood attachment
relationships in moderating the effects of sexual abuse.
"We looked at attachment because attachment theory provides a model of
individual development in the context of family relationships, whereby the
child's sense of self and personality organization are shaped by his or her
earliest relationships, particularly the relationship with the primary
caregiver," explained Feerick, who is from Mt. Kisco, N.Y.
Haugaard and Feerick, who expects her Ph.D. in 1998, analyzed
questionnaires from 313 undergraduate women at Cornell. The researchers
looked at measures of childhood sexual abuse, childhood attachment to
caregivers, adult attachment to partners, achievement, interpersonal
functioning and adjustment.
Of the women surveyed, 68 percent had no history of sexual abuse; 22
percent had been fondled or touched against their will; 9 percent
experienced attempted intercourse and 10 percent had experienced oral,
vaginal or anal intercourse. Twenty-two percent had been subjected to
exposure, which the researchers did not include as sexual abuse.
"These figures, which are fairly representative of the general population,
indicate that sexual abuse is quite prevalent among children and young
girls," said Feerick, who presented the findings at the American
Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Fourth National Colloquium in
Chicago in June 1996. "Among college women, surveys report that up to 20
percent had been sexually abused as children. In our sample, most of the
abuse was committed by people known to the child, rather than strangers,
usually distant male relatives and male acquaintances."
Specifically, the researchers found that on measures of how safe and secure
women feel in an intimate relationship, sexually abused women scored about
half the average score of non-abused women.
"Although our sample consisted exclusively of college students and thus
addresses adult attachment relationships among women who are relatively
young, attachment styles tend to be trait-like and are not expected to
change much as the women grow older," Feerick said.
On measures of trust, sexually abused women scored 10 points lower than
non-abused women on a 108-point scale. Through statistical analyses, the
researchers found this difference to be largely explained by the quality of
adult attachment relationships.
And consistent with other studies, the researchers found no significant
relationship between childhood sexual abuse and academic success and
achievement.
The study was funded, in part, by the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.
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